There are few time where the process behind a recording may be more interesting than the music itself - how its record, who is on the recording, where it was recorded and so on. Thankfully, in the case of ‘No Stairway’, the debut release by Glassline, we get to enjoy both.
This is because allegedly, the album is made up of field recordings of people jamming out in Guitar Center ( the title being a nod to Wayne’s World). As many know, guitar center is an agreeably horrible place to go to hear music; filled with sloppy covers of heavy metal and hard rock songs and the lingering stench of body odor - luckily for us these field recordings are heavily manipulated, spliced up, don’t smell, and are ran through effects to the result of blissful, looping soundscapes that bring to mind William Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’ (’Intro.Vultures.Refuge’, ‘An Open Window’)
Its actually kind of incredible how much these tracks don’t suck - if I hadn’t known about the source material I would have assumed this was just a bunch of well composed pieces of tape noise. Instead, what we get is something familiar, sometimes otherworldly, but always beautiful.
Glassline | Soundcloud | Patient Sounds